We All Fall Down (7 page)

Later, his mother knocked at his bedroom door.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing in the doorway, as if unsure of her welcome.

“It’s not your fault, Mom,” he said, although later he was not thoroughly convinced about whose fault it was.

“I’m also sorry for the way he told you and Addy. That
was
my fault. I wanted to be there when he told you. Wanted to hear him say it. Which was cruel of me, perhaps, but I did it anyway.”

Buddy did not know what to say. Wanted to say a lot of things, ask a lot of questions but said nothing. Saw the grief in his mother’s face, more than grief, a stunned shocked expression as if she had just heard that the world would end in ten minutes and everybody would perish, all she held dear. Stricken by that look, his mother’s shattered eyes, he turned away from her.

“Look, Buddy, I’m not going to make excuses for your father. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know whether this is temporary or not. Whether he’ll get over it. I don’t even know if I want him to come back if he
does
get over it. Christ, I don’t know anything….”

He had never heard his mother swear before. She was always fastidious, elegant, cool, precise. Or maybe she hadn’t sworn. Maybe
Christ
had been the beginning of a prayer.

“He’s your father, Buddy. Yours and Addy’s. You belong to him as much as you belong to me, as much as either of you can belong to anybody. I want you and Addy to love him….”

But how are we supposed to love him after this? Buddy wondered. Thinking of his father with someone else, another woman, and shutting them out of his life, walking out on them this way, deserting them. And nothing he could do about it.

The next night he met Harry Flowers and his stooges at the Mall.

And got drunk for the first time in his life.

He had made his way to the Mall through a series of bus transfers and hitches. The hitches were time-killers between buses, filling small gaps of space. He arrived downtown at dusk and entered the Mall, where it was never dusk or dawn, afternoon or evening but a world without seasons, without weather.

He sat on a yellow plastic bench, looking at the fountain that did not work anymore but not really seeing it. Not seeing anything. Not wanting to see anything but unable, after a while, to ignore people coming and going, drifting by, guys and girls holding hands or brushing against each other. Felt sad watching them and did not know why this
sadness should be added to the other sadness that had brought him to this place.

A couple walked by, holding hands: the girl with long, flowing blond hair and the guy tall, a basketball type. Stopped walking and embraced suddenly, as if they were alone on the planet. Would they someday marry, have kids, two kids maybe, and then separate and later get divorced?

“Somebody die?”

Buddy heard the words at the same time as he raised his head and saw Harry Flowers looking down at him.
Is he talking to me?
Buddy recognized him immediately. Harry Flowers—one of the popular guys at Wickburg Regional and also the subject of rumors: drugs, drinking, wild times.

“You
look
like somebody died,” Harry said, speaking unmistakably now to Buddy. “I’ve been watching you awhile—you’re from school, right?”

Buddy nodded, getting to his feet. Harry Flowers was about Buddy’s height but seemed taller because he stood almost at attention but at the same time, managed to be completely at ease. His eyes were the color of khaki, hooded sometimes but other times, like at this moment, sympathetic. Buddy had seen him strolling the corridors at school, always surrounded by his friends, laughing easily, never hurrying to class like other guys.

“You okay?” Harry asked.

“Nobody died,” Buddy answered, realizing that Harry Flowers had not bothered to introduce himself, assuming Buddy would know who he was. Buddy said no more, shrugging, unwilling to share family secrets with Harry Flowers.

“You need action,” Harry said, smiling his confident and confidential smile. “A bit of diversion. A bit of fun …” Waggling his fingers, eyebrows dancing. Astonishing: cool Harry Flowers doing a Groucho imitation.

Buddy did not discover booze that first night with Harry. But he discovered the marvelous escape it provided. He had taken drinks before at parties or quick gulps from a pint bottle in a paper bag at football games. The excitement of drinking had intoxicated him more than the liquor itself. Or what he regarded as intoxication. But sitting in the front seat of the car with Harry while Randy Pierce and Marty Sanders carried on their Abbott and Costello routines in the backseat, Buddy discovered the marvelous methods of booze, the way it soothed and stroked, made hazy the harshness of things, made him—almost—happy. Languid, and feeling what the hell.

That first night, they only drank and talked and joked and Harry dropped him off in front of his house. Buddy made his way haphazardly up the front walk, stumbled going into the house, lucky his mother and Addy were asleep. Fell into bed, the splendid magic of the booze tumbling him into the bliss of sleep.

Later, came “Funtime,” Harry’s label for the exploits, stupid when sober but exciting and daring when drunk. The evenings always began the same, drinking leisurely in the car while talking casually, joking, listening to Marty and Randy’s conversational routines in the backseat. Buddy noticed after a while that Harry did not drink much, if at all, but encouraged Buddy and the others to do so, supplying an endless amount of booze. Including the gin that became Buddy’s personal drink. He loved the beautiful exotic smell of the gin and what it did to him. Finally, Harry would cry out: “Funtime.” And off they’d go.

To the movies where they caused disruptions, laughing too raucously at scenes that were not funny at all, spilling food, particularly popcorn, all over the place, tearing wrappers off candy bars and sending them flying through the air, guffawing, scuffling mildly, knowing that the ushers
were high school kids, most of them easily intimidated, not eager to notify the theater manager about the noise and distractions.

Other nights they merely cruised the streets, searching for mischief, Harry intimidating other drivers by driving too fast or too slow, cutting in, tailgating.

One weekend Harry obtained some fireworks in New Hampshire while on a trip there with his parents and showed off his display of lethal-looking bombs, an evil grin on his face. Off they went to the countryside, the outskirts of Wickburg, where they blew up mailboxes with the miniature bombs, delighting in the
whomp
of the explosion, giddy and laughing as they roared away. What made this especially exciting, Harry said, was that blowing up mailboxes was a federal offense.

Sometimes, their exploits were senseless, war-whooping their way through Jedson Park, disturbing couples making out in the dark, tossing debris into the decorative pots, pissing in fountains. The next morning, Buddy would shudder, recalling dimly the events of the night before. Those mornings presented him with his first hangovers—stomach in distress, eyes like raw wounds, head bulging with pain plus the knowledge that he had acted shamefully the night before. Looking at himself in the mirror, seeing the perspiring sallow flesh, the bloodshot eyes, the unkempt hair, he vowed that he would not allow Harry to lead him into further “Funtimes.” But somehow by nightfall, he would capitulate again, following Harry Flowers wherever he went.

More than Harry, however, was the liquor that forgave everything. “Funtime” with Harry Flowers and the stooges gave him camaraderie, a sense of belonging to something. Drinking, however, gave him bliss in his loneliness. When he drank and began to drift, the lovely vagueness taking
over his sensibilities, he did not need comrades or companions. Needed nobody. Especially did not need his mother and father.

Artie’s screaming began two weeks after the vandalism. The first time it happened, Jane vaulted from her sleep, unsure of the sound, unable to identify it immediately as screaming. There was silence for a moment, and she heard a door close and then a shriek, this time muffled. Instantly and completely awake, she checked the digital clock on the bedside table:
2:11.

When the screaming began again, she said out of bed, went to the doorway and listened, shivering a bit in the chill of night. The sounds came from the bathroom across the hallway from her bedroom. More screaming, more shrieking, sheer terror in the sound, which set off a kind of terror in her own self.

The oak floor was cold beneath her feet as she paused near the bathroom. Silence within now. Then, whimpering, like a small animal trapped and crying. As she opened the door slightly, she recognized the soothing murmurs of her mother and father. Peeking in, she saw her father sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding Artie in his arms while her mother knelt on the floor, her arms encircling Artie, whose face was pressed into the folds of his father’s pajamas.

Artie began to scream again, lifting his face away from his father’s protection, his eyes open in terror. Then became mute, silent, but holding himself rigid.

Her mother looked up and saw Jane.

“A nightmare,” she said.

But it was not a nightmare. It was sheer terror that Artie could not remember when he finally woke up after a few minutes.

The terror happened three nights in succession, Artie
screaming and sobbing, eyes wide with horror as if he were witnessing acts so horrible and obscene that his mind refused to acknowledge them. His eyes were always wide open as if he were awake. Crying out inconsolably, he inhabited a private world nobody else could enter, beyond the borders of comfort or consolation.

On the fourth day, they took Artie to Dr. Allison back in Monument, their old family doctor who had taken care of the family during all their illnesses.

Dr. Allison ran all sorts of tests in the small clinic he operated. The tests were negative. He said that preadolescent boys sometimes experienced night terrors of this sort. They passed with time.

“Does he think it’s connected with the vandalism?” Jane later asked her father.

“Possibly,” her father said, weariness in his voice. “Dr. Allison wants us to keep in touch. He said that it’s easy to deal with what can be seen—fractures, sprains, cuts and bruises. Or symptoms—fever, high blood pressure and such. But it’s difficult dealing with something that you can’t see. He said that in other cases of this sort, time takes care of it.”

Dr. Allison had been right. A few days passed before Artie’s next nighttime terror. Then they stopped. “Let’s hope forever,” her mother said. Jane and her parents remained tense each evening as bedtime approached and Jane, tossing in bed, felt that a part of them remained awake during the night listening and waiting.

And Artie? He remained an enigma to Jane and maybe her parents, too.

He had always been the standard kid brother, similar to the brothers of all her friends. A tease, a pain in the neck sometimes, living in the private, mysterious world of boyhood, secretive, furtive, coming and going but barely
touching her life except when he chose to torment her with his bathroom humor. His vocabulary was filled with words to describe bodily functions with which he plagued Jane when out of their parents’ earshot. He also provided sound effects for those same functions, which drove Jane out of the house, hands over her ears.

“Is Artie okay?” Kenny Crane called to her one day from across the street while she was out half-jogging.

She pulled up. “I guess so,” she said, puzzled at the concern on Kenny’s thin face. She crossed over to him. “Why are you asking?”

Kenny lifted his thin shoulders in a kind of shrug. “I dunno,” he said. “He doesn’t hang out anymore. We used to swap Nintendos but now he’s not interested.”

“I think Artie’s going through a bad time,” Jane said. “Like everybody does once in a while. But he’ll be all right.” Telling him nothing, actually, because she herself did not know what was wrong with Artie.

“Artie’s my friend,” Kenny declared, chin lifted, his words sounding like a challenge.

After that brief talk with Kenny Crane, Jane kept track of Artie’s comings and goings and discovered that he did not play his crazy video games anymore and, in fact, seldom went into his room except to change his clothes after school and go to bed. He wandered the neighborhood and sometimes disappeared for hours on his bike.

“Where do you go?” Jane asked when he returned from one of his trips and was tightening the bike chain.

“No place,” he said.

This had always been his standard answer, even before the vandalism.

“You had to go
someplace,
” she declared.

He shrugged, concentrating on the chain.

“How come you don’t play your Nintendos anymore?”
she asked. Then, deciding to use a bit of flattery, “I thought you were an ace with the games.”
Ace,
one of his words.

He shrugged again, looking away. “I kind of lost interest. It’s kid stuff, anyway.”

“Kid stuff? I thought you had to be some kind of genius to play those games.”

He looked directly at her, squinting: “How come you’re so interested, all of a sudden?”

“It’s not the games I’m interested in, it’s you. And why you’re not playing them anymore.…”

No answer but at least he wasn’t walking away from her. She took the big plunge. “Has it got something to do with what happened to Karen? The vandalism?”

No answer again, still fiddling around with the bike.

“I don’t like our house anymore,” he said, speaking so low that she barely heard the words. “I hate Burnside, too.”

“I’m not crazy about it either,” she said. “But we’ve got to live here. We just can’t move.”

“Why not? We moved here from Monument. Why can’t we move again?”

“You heard what Dad said. That would be giving in, Artie.” She saw him suddenly not as a bratty kid but as a troubled boy for whom she had a lot of affection.

“Giving in?” he asked, looking up at last. “To who?”

“To whoever did that to us,” she said. “I think maybe they’d like us to move, to show that they changed our lives.” Discovering the thought for the first time as she spoke. “And damn it, Artie, we can’t let them do that.”